The following is a series of brief overviews of some of the interesting demographic indicators. I begin with a basic exploration examined by country, and deep diver into how some of the demographic factors interact with each other. The key thing to note about the deeper analysis in this section is the fact that the interaction analysis of these demographic factors may not be consistent information available on the census-level. Though the WEIGHT variable exists to account for few of the discrepancies, it should be known that the weighting may play just a limited role in making the analysis true to census level data. Thus, though there may be extrapolations and analysis done in conjunction with the countries’ demographic characteristics, this section ultimately explores the demographics of the survey respondents with slight adjustments to their age group and sex.
Age
Per country
Contrasting the weighted graph to the unweighted, we can tell that the WEIGHT variable increases the portion of younger respondents (in 20s and 30s) to match each country’s census data. The codebook notes that the weights also account for potential error/bias in gender as well for all four countries, and urbanization and education levels as well for Taiwan.
Korea and Taiwan’s distribution of age are relatively skewed to the right; we can see that the spread is consistent with age distribution/composition of developed countries. What is notable in Japan’s graph is the the fact that older population (people in their 60~80s) constitute a significant portion of the respondents. This is reflective of the high lifespan of Japan at 83 years in 2012, compared to the other countries (81 for Korea, 75.6 for China, 79 for Taiwan).) This also reveals as well as the aging of the society as the country was experiencing at a higher rate compared to the other countries due to the low death rate and the incredibly low fertility rate, though Taiwan and Korea have even lower fertility rates. In the case of China, the drastic peak in the 40s group is consistent with the rapid increase of birth rate 1960s (during the post-war period) that constantly decreased until dipping (and increasing slightly back again) down due to the implementation of the one-child policy. This sample still fails to reflect the second peak in the people in their 20s, presumably one generation down from those born in the 60s.
It should also be noted that the median age differs somewhat significantly country by country:
| (1) CN-China |
48 |
| (2) JP-Japan |
54 |
| (3) KR-South Korea |
50 |
| (4) TW-Taiwan |
45 |
|
|
This plot illustrates the point made earlier about Japan’s aging society of the points mentioned above; Japan’s median age is among the highest in the world (along with Germany) at 46.1.
Status
Let’s take a look at other demographic factors such as marital status, main status, and education (keep in mind that this survey only studied adult citizens of the countries):
Marital status
Given the fact that surveys were conducted via different institutions in each of the countries, it is difficult to tell whether or not the discrepancy among these proportions come from the fact that they are from different countries with widely different cultural/social norms, or if they come from the difference in sampling methods. Nevertheless, the majority of repondents from all four countries were married. Second biggest share of marital status was those who were married, though not as significantly big in China. China, at 79%, had the biggest proportion of respondents who were married. Taiwan had the lowest, at 58%.
Though it may not eliminate the potential inconsistency from sampling discrepancy, more valuable information might be discovered by comparing these variables with one another, or with other demographic factors like age and gender.
Marital status breakdown by sex
The gender breakdown of marital status reveals some interesting patterns. Some of the most conspicuous findings is that more men have never been married, and that the widowed population is dominated by females, most of whom were in their 60s and 70s. The biggest age group among widowed men was slightly older, in their 80s, consistent with the fact that females are widowed earlier due to relatively longer age expectancy. Though the four countries show farily consistent gender shares of different marital statuses, striking deviation can be seen from Taiwan’s female dominance (n = 8 female vs. 2 male) among the those that are separated with the intention to divorce (what do the men that they used to be together with these women perceive their marital status as?). Japan’s cohabitance group being entirely male is also interesting, it was just three respondents in their, an interesting figure to ponder upon given the fact that two parties must be separated The fact that more women with from the norm when looking at
Marital status breakdown by age group
There are very few people in their 20s married in Japan and Taiwan when compared to China and Korea. Japan is also an anomaly in showing a robustly high count of married people among the older population throughout mid-to-late years as well, while the remainder of the countries see a steep decrease after hitting a peak in 30s and 40s.
Never married
Here, we are taking a look specifically at those who were never married. There’s obviously a high count for the younger demographics, with the exception of Japan, where there’s a lot more never married people in their 30s. In Japan, most never married people are male until it reaches late 70s and on, when there are presumably less males counterparts existing. This similar trend is also seen in Taiwan. What’s interesting about China is that though there is a lot more unmarried younger females, older population that were never married are all male; this a similarly cased in Korea.
Main status
More than half of valid responses came from people in paid work for all four countries. Second most common status was being in domestic work or retired for every country except for Korea, where domestic work and “other” were most common after paid work. Let’s take a look at how this breaks down by sex:
Main status breakdown by sex
Indisputable findings are the dominance of femaes in domestic work, and more than half of those in paid work being male. The retired population was also dominated by male with the exception of China, where there were slightly more females indicating their status to be retired. Female’s main status China actually stands out in other regards as well, in the sense that fields dominated by male in other countries (like retired, apprentice or trainee, unemployed and looking for a job, etc) are fairly even in the case of China. A noticeable portion of male are also in domestic work, and there are more women in education than men.
Domestic work
Taking a closer look at those whose main status is domestic work, we see different patterns arising in different countries. With the predominant pattern being that there is most females in their mid-ages (centering around the 50s age group) in domestic work, Japan is an evident exception here, as it showcases a bimodal distribution with peaks in the 40s (which can be overlooked, for China and Korea has high counts for women in their 40s here too) and 60s-70s (seen in no other countries). China’s highest count being women in their 30s is also notable.
Education level
The most predominant education level is one of the most evident discoveries from this plot. Korea had the highest share of university graduates and overall post-secondary education attainment. In the case of Taiwan and Korea, the two highest education level are high school degree and university degree, the two showcasing an even share of counts. China had the lowest rate of those who completed what is considered “compulsory education” (attaining high school diploma), with the majority of respondents having education level in between no formal education at all and completing junior high, which had the highest share. Japan had a remarkably high proportion of respondents who obtained until high school degree, and overall had the highest share of respondents who completed compulsory education and beyond. It is a known fact that vocation and professional pursuits are prioritzed/respected before an academic degree in Japan, as also indicated it having the highest share of those who attained junior college degrees.
Education breakdown by sex
Japan had more noticeable differences from the other countries in the breakdown by sex as well, as junior college degrees were received predominantly by females (fairly even in the other three countries), while university and graduate school degrees were largely clainmed by men (university degree and even graduate school, with the exception of Taiwan, also had quite even ratios in the other countries). The group that did not receive any formal education (0) was dominated by females, and the majority of those who only attended up until elementary school (1) was also female for all four countries.
Perceived social hierarchy
Perceived social hierarchy by country
The four countries have surprisingly similar perceived social hierarchy of the self (this may be one of the first variables whose pattern coincided for all four countries!). The only noticeable difference is in the fact that Japan‘s median score was 6, an interesting statistic considering that all of the other countries had a median score of 5. Taiwan also showed interesting findings, such as a relatively high portion of respondents from Taiwan rating their social hierarchy as 1 and 7 (the other three countries’ second common score was one lower than the median, not higher).
Perceived social hierarchy by age group
While most countries experience the “worsening” of perceived social hierarchy as you observe bottom to top across the y axis (younger to older), Japan showcased the opposite trend, with greater share of people rating their social hierarchy to be 6 or higher as you went up the y-axis.
Perceived social hierarchy by sex
Taking a look at the gender breakdown, with the exception of Korea, where females perceived their social hierarchy to be the lowest as well as highest (with males clustering in the middle ranges), the countries saw a diagonal divide between the genders: more male perceived their social hierarchy to be low (close to 1), and more females perceived their social hierarchy to be high (close to 10). Minor exception lies in Taiwan’s almost even gender divide between those tho rated their social hierarchy to be 10.
Overall, though, the most noticeable trend is that females rated their social hierarchy in the middle (5 or 6) at a share significantly higher than males. In the case of China and Taiwan, significantly more males than females rated their score to be fairly low (4 or lower), though most males in Japan and Korea rated somewhere around the middle ranges (4 to 7).
Perceived social hierarchy by education level
Interesting findings can be found looking at perceived social hierarchy broken down by education level as well. One of the most striking findings is that though university + graduate school degree did increase higher as you went up the y axis (lower to higher perceived hierarchy), this trend generally ended at around the score of 7 to 8. The highest social hierarchyof the self (of score 10) was perceived, surprisingly, mostly by those with high school diplomas (middle school in the case of China and Taiwan). It is interesting to conclude that education level did not ensure the highest perceived social hierarchy.
In terms of community level, Taiwan showed city residence (as well as suburban residence) was positively associated with increasing perceived social hierarchy. In no other countries were there distinct pattern as such caused by community type.
Career
Excluding outliers (filtered to be less than the maximum number of hours per week), the median weekly work hours for China was 47 hours, 40 for Japan, 51 for Korea, and 44 for Taiwan. Mean work hours is similarly high with China at 52 hours, Japan at 41 hours, Korea at 52 hours, and Taiwan at 47.
The breakdown of the numnber of people working full time vs. part time jobs is as follows:
China has a notably small proportion of workers working part-time jobs, while Japan has a big proportion. Looking at the number of hours worked by full time vs part time workers reveals more interesting discoveries:
These figures generally get higher as we filter to those working in full-time jobs only. However, interestingly enough, Taiwan and China’s median work hour actually decreases here from 47 to 46 hours, indicating that there may be long hours worked for those working part time jobs. On the reverse side, the significant increase in median work hours for Japan indicates the short hours worked for those working part time jobs. Among the respondents, The median for Korea here is starkly high at nearly 54 hours; to specifically elaborate on Korea, where my parents worked for several decades, extension of a regular workday to one with a night shift (with no overtime pay in most cases) is a regular occurrence.
To see if our assumption about part time work is true, let’s take a look at those working part time jobs:
China has remarkably high working hours for part-time workers, with the median hours at 47 and the mean hours at 51.65, less than an hour less than the average work hours for full-time workers. One assumption that can be made about this is that a significant portion of part-time workers may be working more than one job. It might also be the case that the notion of full time and part time job may be different in China It should be noted here that our dataset does not capture whether or not a respondent was working a part-time job in addition to his or her full-time job, which could’ve led to a more interesting analysis on this matter.
Work hours vs. gender
Generally speaking, females work longer hours than male. This exmaple is most illustrative in the case of Japan, where the lower hours are predominantly blue and the longer hours predominantly red.
This is especially interesting when you note the fact that almost half of Japanese females are working part-time jobs:
Breakdown of Japanese work type by sex
| (1) Working full-time |
661 |
331 |
| (2) Working part-time |
119 |
318 |
In no other countries do females have such a high percentage of part-time workers, as can be seen in this plot:
Looking at the breakdown of specifically Japanese female workers, we can see that what was driving the gender discrepancy in Japan’s “Work hours by gender” graph above indeed was female Japanese part time workers.
Gender wage gap
The trend is conspicuous for all four countries: females work less hours, and earn less money. From the cluster on the lower left corner, we can also tell that females get paid less for the same number of hours worked; vertically scanning the plot from top to bottom (ignoring NAs), there are very instances where a blue dot precedes red dots, nor is there a range of x values where blue dominates the top portion. (This may be our second finding in which there was a consistent pattern across all four countries).
Social dynamic with nonkin contact
A closer look at the nonkin contacts can be attained by looking at the social status of the contact, relative to the respondent, as preceived by the respondent.
All four countries show that social contact is most predominant with those who people perceive to be socially equals.
Among those, China had the highest share (89%) of those who answered that the majority of people they contact with are socially equivalent to them.
In all four cases, there are more contacts with those who people perceive to be socially higher than lower, with China having the biggest margin in between the two kinds of contact. The ratio of those who have more contact with people with higher social status compared “(3)” to those with those who have more contact with lower social status “(1)” is as follows:
China stands out in this figure too, as about six times the people said they have more contact with people higher social status than lower. The ratio was significantly lower for the other three countries.
Looking at the proportion divided by age group reveals interesting findings. Though it is unclear whether or not these are generational differences or the social circumstances depending on age that affect thre relationship between age and social dynamic with your contact, it can be seen that generally speaking, contact with people who are “socially higher” than you decreases the older you get, with the exception of China, in which the count of socially higher contact remains almost constant throughout the age groups. Noticeable difference exists in the share of socially lower contact though; in the case of Korea and China, social contact with those with lower social status dramatically increases in the 90s age group, presumably due to the influence of time spent at senior citizens’ center (an institution that is comparable to daytime retirement home, usually run by the government (free of cost)). This contrasts with the cases of Japan and Taiwan, where this share is the highest for those in their 40s and 50s.